Tosca

Tosca

Giacomo Puccini

Libretto by Luigi Illica & Giuseppe Giacosa

West Bay Opera

With music that flows with abundant passion and fury, with performances directed and acted with creative insight and fervor, and with a setting made grand and glorious by massive and majestic projections, West Bay Opera once again proves with its current production of Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca that the second oldest opera company in the West can more than hold its own even among companies multiple times larger in scale and scope.  And with three key principals that any opera company would envy to have in the starring roles of this oft-performed, much-beloved opera, West Bay is guaranteed to wow its audiences with a Tosca they will long remember.

The tightness of the timeline of Tosca – with all the action occurring in less than twenty-four hours – as well as the historical context of Napoleon’s June 17, 1800, approach toward Rome only enhance the stakes and the tension of Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa’s libretto.  The storyline is brimming with torture, murder, and suicide as well as romantic flirting, jealousies, and fruition.  The difference between life and death or between love gained and love lost centers time and again on decisions that must be made on incomplete information.  The frailty of human existence in a time of national upheaval rings as true today as it did over two centuries ago in light of the invasions and conflicts currently disrupting thousands of lives around the globe – everyday people much like Puccini’s singer Tosca, painter Cavaradossi, or patriot prisoner Angelotti.

When the former counsel of Rome and now escaping political prisoner, Cesare Angelotti (bass Isaiah Musik-Ayala), arrives at a chapel to look for a disguise left by his sister, he is discovered by his friend, Mario Cavaradossi (tenor Xavier Prado), who is painting a Madonna whose face resembles Angelotti’s pious sister whom the painter has previously observed praying.  Cavaradossi hides his friend from the pursuing police, sealing his own fate without knowing it as he sings with deep-felt, resounding conviction, “Even if it would cost my life, I will save you 

Soon to enter is the enticingly attired Tosca to catch a moment and maybe a kiss from her beloved artist.  Upon hearing another voice as she arrives, she suspects Mario of unfaithfulness, especially when seeing his Madonna of blue eyes rather of those much darker like her own.  

What follows is our first real chance to revel side by side the voices of Julia Behbudov and Xavier Prado, soprano and tenor extraordinaire respectively.  Her bout of accusations and his pleas of innocence are followed by their declarations of true love, with each voice beautifully projecting its pristine clarity and emotional depth.

Tosca asks Mario (in English translation of the original Italian libretto), “Do you not long for a little house that awaits us,” her notes painting in flowing, effusive patterns even more vividly than her words how “Tosca burns with a mad love” for her Mario.  His tenor responses of resplendent notes build to a passion-filled peak that near shake the rafters of the Lucie Stern Theatre and certainly cause our own hearts to flutter.  

In a departing duet, their voices tightly intermingle in heart-pounding blends even as their bodies mold into one.  From this, our first introduction of the two together until their final, fateful embrace only a few hours later, there is a palpable, pulsating passion in the love felt and expressed between this pair of lovers.  

As Tosca, Julia Behbudov exudes time and again richly rounded notes that express the wide range of life-affirming, death-pending emotions that Tosca undergoes in these few, fateful hours.  While she at times climbs gingerly in soft notes to heavenly highs in describing her love for Mario, she equally if not exceeds in countering with astounding power and presence other moments of anger, defiance, or fear in notes of sheer, soprano catharsis.  Particularly memorable is when her Tosca questions God how her past reverence and devotion have been answered by the torture she currently faces of making a choice between her lover’s life and her own chastity.  Heart-touching notes pierce the air with her reverberating pleas to understand, “How do you repay me thus?” 

Similarly, Xavier Prado’s Mario provides bountiful reasons to extol his noteworthy performance.  In a final aria as he awaits execution, he remembers the scent of perfume and the feel of kisses of his Tosca, singing notes that throb as they beautifully project his fervorous affection.  As he tenderly sings of “sweet kisses” with tenor heights that grab our hearts and elicit our tears, his Mario once again shakes our very beings with a cry of anguish before collapsing in despair of his fate.

Not to be overlooked as equally notable is the sinisterly stellar performance of Robert Balonek as Baron Scarpia, whose evil, slithering manner and his booming baritone voice repeatedly come close to being the performance’s showstopper.  When Rome’s Chief of Police first enters the chapel just as services and “Te Deum” are about to begin, his vibrating chords trumpet his arrival as he scolds the assembled whom the pompously pious Scarpia believes are being too jovial and chatty.  

Those first, reverberating notes are a preview of a voice that later seethes in a rich, but disturbing sung plot of how he plans to force Tosca into his bed as a means supposedly to save the life of Cavaradossi, whom Scarpia knows has helped the traitor Angelotti to escape.  When he sings of his own near-frantic desire for Tosca, he softens in tones for a few brief moments to sing with an impassioned flair that is almost believable as genuine love, but the building lust soon takes commands in his notes, especially as he gloats of the upcoming gallows for his rival in love, Mario.  His Scarpia leans into his sung phrases with such power and persistence of tone to send shudders down one’s spine, particularly as he describes what will happen to Tosca’s lover if she does not acquiesce to his demands 

The high drama of the story works so well because Puccini keeps these three and their fates always in our primary focus.  Other fine singers like the exacting excellence of the richly voiced Chung-Wai Soong as the priest Sagrestano deserve much praise, including a beautifully blended Chorus of twenty (under direction by Bruce Olstad) and a charming group of Altar Boys from the Silicon Valley Boys. Choir.  And as is always true for a West Bay Opera production, tremendous kudos goes also to Conductor José Luis Moscovich for another score’s rapturous rendering.  I sometimes found myself turning my focus from the stage just to relish the orchestra’s intricate and enticing rendition of Puccini’s score.

Throughout the performance, many subtle but wonderfully impactful decisions have been made by Stage Director José María Condemi that pay off big time.  The first time Scarpia encounters Tosca in the church as she is weeping in her belief of Mario’s love of another, Scarpia offers her his handkerchief to wipe her tears — a handkerchief that becomes a repeated victim of his clasped hands as he sniffs her lingering fragrance, something he will also later do again with a scarf taken from her neck.  When he is trying to seduce her in his apartment, the licentious devil slides his hands down her gown as she recoils, with her immediately desperately trying to wipe his prints and presence off the skirt’s folds.  She had also just wiped with vigorous efforts her own hands after he had clasped them in his forceful supplication of her love.  These are just a few examples of a director’s touch that heighten greatly the power of an already magnificent libretto.

The larger-than-life settings of the three acts — a high-ceilinged, lavishly adorned church, an apartment smacking of wealth and power, and a prison’s rooftop terrace with foreboding statuary and a city’s darkened skyline in the background — have been designed in set and projections with rich colors and in colossal proportions by Peter Crompton and have been populated with period-perfect properties by Shirley Benson.  The lighting designs of Daniele Ferguson add the finishing touches to create scenes and settings that house impressively and expressively the passionate intrigue and events of the opera.  Callie Floor’s costumes splendidly depict the various professions, classes, and personalities of the cast and chorus aided generously by the wigs and make-up design skills of David Gillam.

Whether a Puccini aficionado or novice, West Bay Opera’s Tosca is a local offering of his masterpiece not to be missed by Bay Area audiences.  With only two more performances, grab a ticket quickly so not to be left disappointed by probable sold-out audiences.

Rating: 5 E 

A Theatre Eddys Best Bet Performance

Tosca continues May 30 and 31, 2026, in a three-hour production (two intermissions) in production by West Bay Opera at Lucie Stern Center, 1305 Middlefield Road, Palo Alto.  Tickets are available online at https://www.wbopera.org/ or in person/by phone at the box office Monday – Friday 1-5 p.m. at 221 Lambert Avenue, Palo Alto (650-424-9999).

Photo Credits: Natalya Polyakova